Where to begin. There are thousands and thousands of webpages on this error. Most trumpeting a solution, Half of them totally contradicting the other half. ("Change VM to programs" "Change VM to System Cache" "convert to NTFS" "Convert to Fat32" "turn on bios udma" "turn off bios udma" "turn off write caching on destination drive" "turn off write caching on source drive"

I've spent tons of time on this issue. Brain fried. Uninstalled lots of recent software, causing new issues. Still getting teh error.

What I'd like your help is --

WHICH of the untried fixes (see below) for this issue can I ignore, and which should I continue pursuing (which I haven't already) - -based on my particulars? If you can whittle it down, and I fix it, I'll be eternally grateful (if I don't have a stroke first).

Main "particular" is -- THE HARDWARE HAS NOT CHANGED AT ALL, and I have been using acronis on this same PC to back up images to these same USB drives for over a years. So something fucked up the OS? Muswt be!

Windows XP Home also gives an error --
Windows - Delayed Write Failed
Windows was unable to save all the data for the file M:\$Mft. The data has been lost.

and then sometimes:
The Unknown USB Device is a Hi-Speed USB Device and will function at reduced speed when plugged into a non-Hi Speed port.

CONTEXT:
The following issue is happening ONLY on my Hard Drives that are in USB enclosures, NOT on my other (internal EIDE PATA) drives.

Also, the following issue so far happens when I try to create ACRONIS hard drive disk image backups ONTO the USB drives. I can create ACRONIS files on my EIDE hard drives fine. HOwever, after the error, the USB drive is STILL VISIBLE, and I can copy SOME Files to the usb HD.

At one point, after getting the error, I tried manually copying large files (700mb - 4gb) from my internal drives to the USB drives, using windows explorer, I got the "Delayed Write Failed" error again -- AND the USB hd disappeared from explorer. But since then (dunno why), I am able to copy 10gb plus files OK, manyually. SO FAR!.

NOTE -- in the past, with exactly the same hardware, I was able to do the above Acronis imaging to USB hard drives fine. No hardware changes have occured since the last time it worked. Only thing that's changed has been software installation. TRied to get rid of all recent stuff. (see below).

FIXES ATTEMPTED SO FAR:

I tried different cables, and two different external USB drives (EIDE PATA drives in USB2 to IDE enclosures), no diff.

-- added page file to both USB drives (200-400) (stupid?) there's no OS on them
as microsoft suggests, changed HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management, System Pages from c3000 to 0xFFFFFFFF

Other Weirdness:
-- Acronis stalls when beginning to back up to a second USB hd, won't go past 0%
-- checkdisk (run from xp) says both usb drives are FINE, but if i run checkdisk wtih the FIX / Repair swithes, it hangs. (phase 4)
-- Windows no longer opens an expolorer page to announce turning on / plugging in of usb drives
-- It's very hot here now

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